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A lot of times, I see people asking for advice on how to do a conversion, or expressing uncertainty about having the skills to do one. So, I decided to create (what I hope will be) a helpful topic to cover that area. I'm aiming this primarily at beginners, or those that 'don't think they can', but hopefully everyone will find something useful or interesting here.
First off, let's dispel the 'I can't/I'm not good enough' myth. Nonsense! If you can operate simple mechanical devices, you have all the skills you need to perform simple conversions. It's easy and fun, all it takes is some practice. Just remember, you're going to want to practice on some inexpensive figures before you start in on anything really crazy. Bones figures are great for this.
So, here's what you'll need:
1.A hobby knife with a new blade--new blades are easier to use, and safer. Caution: these are sharp, please be careful.
2.Some green stuff, or whatever type of sculpting putty you prefer. This will be used for filling gaps and/or sculpting new details.
3.Some victims volunteers figures you want to convert. In this case, I'm going to be using some Bones Goblins (remember the practice on inexpensive figures part?) for 2 reasons; they're cheap, and I have a horde of them and don't like having a bunch of clones on the table top.
4.Super Glue; the stuff in my picture is the best that I've found for working on Bones, and it's not too shabby on other materials, either. There are many other types out there; find the one that works the best for you.
5.Something to pin parts with; in this case I'm using paperclips. They're plenty strong enough for what I'll be doing. Again there are a lot of things you can use, go with what works for you. I use brass rod for bigger and/or metal miniatures; it's stronger.
Not pictured:
A razor saw for cutting metal figures. Mine is missing right now, but the one I use is made by X-Acto.
6. A drill and bits for making holes for pinning your figures.
7. A bits box. This is where you keep all of your spare parts for conversions. I've got around a dozen of these things, all full of weapons, shields, body parts, and all sorts of other things.If you buy a figure that has different head or weapon options, the pieces you decided not to use go into your bits box. Got a figure that you've already cut the head and both arms off of to use elsewhere? Keep it. You might want those boots for something next summer. Never throw anything away.
Here we go!
The first conversion will be a simple weapon swap; a spear into a halberd.
Here, you can see I cut off the spear head in order to replace it with something else. This brings up a good rule: try to find a 'seam' to make your cuts at, if possible. Here, the 'seam' is where the head of the spear meets the shaft. Other good 'seams' are wrists, especially if there is a sleeve/gauntlet/wristband that will provide a guide for cutting and leave a nice flat space to attach the new part.
Not quite as good of a seam here, mostly because the top of the hand/fist isn't entirely flat. It's still a very good spot to use for weapon swaps, though.
(I'm sorry, I forgot to take pictures of these guys, but you can see them completed in the group pictures down below.)
Now, let's do some shield swaps.
This is the spear goblin. What I want you to notice here is that I was careful to cut the shield off in such a way that the straps were left intact on the goblins arm. Sure, you can just chop the shield off however you want to, but: a) you'll have to re-sculpt those straps, so why make extra work for yourself, and b) that shield might come in handy somewhere else. Never throw anything away.
Here he is with his new shield:
:
This is he mace goblin; I couldn't get a decent shot with his shield removed. This shows the new shield in place. Note that I made certain to preserve the straps on the shield arm again.
And from the front:
'Wait a minute!' I hear you cry, 'I just started this hobby 5 minutes ago, I don't have a bits box with lots of neat stuff in it for me to do conversions with'
No problem, the next 2 are for you.
These 2 goblins got a literal weapon swap. I cut the weapons off (again, I tried to do the cutting at a 'seam') of each figure and reattached them to the other figure.
And here they are all glued back together:
The sharp eyed among you will notice that the bottom of the spear is a slightly different color than the rest. I accidentally cut into the bottom portion when i was trying to clean up the points where it was attached to the figure.(See? I make mistakes, too. No matter, carry on! That's why we're practicing.) I used a little bit of modeling putty to smooth it out.
These next 2 are actually the first 2 that I did, before it occurred to me to document the process for others, so I don't have in progress shots of them.They are included just to provide more examples of what can be done in a few minutes.
You'll notice that these fellows have some green stuff on them. The goblin on the left has had his arm from the elbow down swapped with one from a pathfinder goblin. I made some wrappings out of GS to hide the join between the 2 parts. The goblin on the right had his shield and arm from the elbow down removed and the arm from the first goblin grafted on. The 2 parts did not align very well, so I gave him a chain mail sleeve from GS to hide the join.
Detail of the added armor.
And finally, here they are all together.
Added weapon, swapped spear for mace,swapped shield, changed weapon tip
pathfinder goblin arm, shield swap, weapon swap, swapped mace for spear
Was this useful/helpful/informative for you? Is there anything I could do better? Is this something that you'd like to see me continue doing?
Please note that I made this an open thread; I'm not the only person that does this, and I am by no means a master at it. If you've got some tips/tricks to add please do so. Step-by-step pictures of what you're working on would be great; I'm still learning, too!
I hope that this inspires at least one person to give converting a try.

Alright, ReaperCon is just around the corner and I really need to get cracking on my entires. I already have a thread up for my planned Painter's entries and I will be doing separate ones for my Open and Diorama entries. So first off here is my Open entry, the Bones version of Anirion:
Oh, wait that's not right ...
Much better
This conversion came to be due to one of the critiques I received last year and that was to up the difficulty of my conversions. So first thing I did was scan Reaper's site and pick out minis that would be a good base for conversions. I got a pretty good list but I really got stuck on Anirion and turning him into a Jedi. This is the result.
Here is the conversion break down:
-Reshaped hood and sleeves
-Smoothed out cloak to remove border
-Removed staff and bag?
-Repositioned arms
-Added light saber out of styrene and metal piece
Now on to paint and basing.
Here are some side by side comparisons.

^^ Link to the WIP.
My Stephanie Law Kickstarter loot pack had their first goof up! Lucky for me, they rectified the situation immediately. At any rate, I had a spare necromancer body and a spare bard arm. I decided to do my first ever conversion and connect the two! I told my friend about this, and we came up with the idea to make The Necrobard an emo-punk rock musician, with heavy influence from My Chemical Romance (specifically The Black Parade). See inspiration:
Instead of a summoner, we settled on a "everything hurts" idea of the stereotypical depressed musician/comedian who has very high charisma, but hides a lot of pain. And he wears a lot of black. My friend is indeed going to play this character (his initials are hiding in red in the crook of the lute). Bardic party buffing plus necro debuffing of bad guys.
I attempted to make it look like he was casting a necromancy spell by freehanding his hands to have the skeleton glowing through the gloves, and the lute glow where he holds it, and out of the center. I picked "The Punisher" character's logo for an easy skull to freehand on the back. The red stain is because the character beat his brother over the head with the lute as a backstory. I added the skull to the base for the heck of it. If you look closely at the bard-arm, it doesn't line up perfectly... but good enough for a first conversion, yeah? My epoxy was being a butt, so I settled on pins and super glue. If not for the inspiration being bleach blonde, I likely would have given him dark hair. But hey, crazy pale was an adventure to paint. As was the absurd amount of black/gray.
The photos I think are over-bright, so I will be tweaking them in the future; I think less light but longer exposure (if I can hold steady) would do wonders - better ones to come in a week or so when I can pin Doug down with my camera.
Comments, critique, musical expressions of sadness or joy - all welcome!

I got my Stephanie Law KS pack from DSM. Its awesome. There are many more pieces to glue than in Reaper figures so I'm kinda worried about that. Anyway, onto the not so pressing but very fun matter.
I had the honor of being the first one to get a goofed up package in the kickstarter. I got the male necromancer (arms and body), the arms of the male bard, and a second male necromancer body. DSM swiftly sent out a replacement bard, complete with a body and arms.
Goal: The Necrobard
Now I have spare bard arms and a spare necromancer body. Dilemma: the arms are well, arms. The body needs a single arm. The socket is also not perfect due to slightly different clothing but it is darn close. The arm and the arm-hole that are needed are both at the elbow joint.
How would you recommend taking the right hand off the lute so that the male necromancer can be holding a lute in front of him in his left hand? Thus he would become the necrobard, who would sing the dead back to life.

This past week I finished up the Shipwreck Revenant from Bones 3. I converted it to have figurehead on the front, made from the Bones 3 Succubus Queen figure, instead of the "face" piece that comes with the model.
For anyone who would like to read the Conversion thread, see: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/75736-shipwreck-golem-with-sophies-mom-figurehead-conversion/
For anyone who would like to see the Work in Progress painting thread, see: http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/75885-painting-my-converted-shipwreck-revenant-photo-heavy/
I'm generally pleased with how it turned out, and I think the figurehead makes a good addition to the model. Unfortunately, this is a very hard model to photograph well, as the long arms tend to block most angles and make any straight-on shot hard to accomplish. Also, the way the top hull juts out and tilts down (the figurehead addition didn't help this), makes the underside of the model hard to see as well; and combined with the way the arms jut out, gives a general top-heavy appearance.

No, not the ever lovin' blue eyed Ben Grimm.
Not John Carpenter's horrific alien beast, either. (Although, there is a certain resemblance....)
No, this abomination was made at Reapercon last year. I plan on fixing it up and entering it in the open category at the coming Reapercon.
This is what it looked like when I got home from the 'con.
And this is what it looks like now:
I still like the other head idea, and may revisit that sometime in the future, but for now, I like this one better.

So I was never thrilled with the "face" on the Shipwreck Revenant; it always looked a little contrived and dorky to me. To me it would have looked much better with some sort of menacing figurehead on the front. Then it struck me that Reaper's Dark Maiden would be prefect for this. I tried mine out, and was amazed at how perfectly it fit on the front.
But before I shelled out the money to order a new one, I thought I'd dig through my Bones pile and see if anything would fill the bill. That's when I hit on the Succubus Queen (Sophie's Mom) from the Stoneskull Expansion. She had a plain enough pose that she looked like she'd be a good candidate for a figurehead. And as I played around with bending her wings back, I realized if I flipped them over they closely mirrored the curve of the prow of a ship. I thought her demonic appearance would help sell the evil feel of the Shipwreck Golem as well.
Photo Linked for nudity: https://flic.kr/p/VMjoZF
So, a bit of hack and chop later, and I had trimmed her down, separated the wings, and found a bit of curved sprue that would be a good candidate for the front beam of the ship.
Photo linked for nudity: https://flic.kr/p/WNWTmT
And so this where I ended for the night. I will need to soak my Succubus parts in some soapy water and get them washed, rinsed, and dried, before I start gluing anything.

A bunch of you enjoyed my recent thread in the Conversions sub-forum in which I did some conversions on my Shipwreck Revenant from Bones 3, (To see that thread, click here: Shipwreck Revenant Conversion.), so I thought I'd do a thread to track my painting progress as well.
To sum up that thread; basically, I replaced the "face" part of the Revenant with a figurehead using the Succubus Queen (Sophie's Mom) figure from the Bones 3 Stoneskull Expansion. I also replaced the Tiki Head on the back with a section of mast and a ship's wheel, as well as reinforcing the harpoon arm so it wouldn't warp under it's own weight, and a few other small additions.
Here's a shot from about halfway though the work...
So early this morning I gave all the parts a primer coat with Krylon with Fusion "Flat Black".
Then, this afternoon when it was dry, I gave the parts an initial dry brush coat of Americana "Charcoal Grey"
Followed with a dry brush coat of Americana "Mississippi Mud".
And finished the base coat dry brushing with a final coat of Americana "Barn Wood".
I'm now debating if I want to glue the whole thing together before moving on to the rest of the painting, or continue working on each part individually.

So, I've finally found a friend who is interested in Frostgrave and we've got a campaign going! We played several "practice" games with other warbands, but now we're ready to really enact a campaign. We, of course, waited until we'd received our copies of The Frostgrave Folio so we could include captains. I decided that the captain is my warband's actual leader and the brains behind the operation for the sake of the narrative. First off, let's meet the warband!
"This had better be worth what I'm paying," the auburn-haired warrior said to the odd fellow with the foppish hat.
"Oh good heavens yes!" the foppishly-hatted fellow said waving his arms flamboyantly around. "Felstad! City of wonders, mystery, enchantment...and other adjectives! It's thawing! If you can get there before other looters...I mean...historians, the treasures and riches of a past civilization of magical mavericks is yours!"
Branna sighed to herself, and handed over the bag of coin. She hated to part with such a sum, but tried to consider it an investment: pay money to make money. She knew she'd need a band of followers to share in the excursion, and she'd already started her recruiting. Reliq Burrows, pirate-turned-thug-for-hire, and Dell Furth, the skittish archer, were already on board and were sitting a table away as she secured the map. After all, it's always smart to have back-up around in case deals like this go south.
Next, Branna needed more hands to carry off loot they'd find. She knew exactly who she wanted to target for this.
"Hmm, sounds dangerous," said Jaffy Lightfoot, the Halfling thief. "Yes, much too dangerous. I prefer my safe, urban setting where plenty of pockets make themselves available for the picking. Yes. I say no."
"Huh, coward," chuckled his taller companion, Ella Shar. "Good luck getting out of your next scrape when someone catches your hand in their pocket and I'm not there to bail you out. I'm going with Branna."
At this, the Halfling started making some odd sound at the back of his throat. It wasn't quite a gagging sound, nor did it entirely sound like whining. Ella had gotten used to it, and gave Branna a wink as she knew this sound indicated that Jaffy was weighing the options, but would ultimately side with her: as always.
"Fine," he said with a sigh, "but I'm going to regret this, I'm sure."
"Of course you will," Ella replied. "Regret is one of your many great skills!"
With a couple of treasure grabbers on board, Branna knew she'd need some magic. After all, one does not wander into a land of wizards without bringing one or two of your own. She'd known some great and impressive wizards in her day. Unfortunately, the only ones available, were...well...these ones.
"So, hot stuff, come to take me up on my offer?" the obviously fiendishly blooded fellow said, his voice dripping with self-confidence.
"No," Branna replied, and launched into a quick explanation of the quest before he had time to try throwing yet another of his bad pick-up lines her way. V'Roth Forcahl had quite the reputation as an overly-confident ladies' man. Strangely, his meek and timid apprentice, Sylvania Efilbrooke, never seemed to be one of those ladies. In his interactions with her, he seemed caring and almost fatherly. Strange qualities compared to his usual gusto and bravado.
At length, she finished her explanation. Sylvania looked at V'Roth to see how they'd respond. The tiefling laughed and said, "You know this is just your coy game to get in more time with me, Branna, but I'll play along."
"Excellent," Branna replied, then added, "it'll be cold where we're going. You should find a shirt." V'Roth simply laughed in reply and then flexed.
Branna was fairly happy with the band she'd gathered thus far. However, a single archer and her own bow would surely not be enough. Realistically, she could use another treasure grabber while she was at it. That settled it, she was going to bring in the twins.
Venna, the sharpshooter with the crossbow, and Vesienne, the rogue, were quite a capable duo. The drawback, they were excessively co-dependent. A warband is ideally composed of members who will look out for each other. Branna knew full well that either of the DeMoir sisters would forsake the rest of the warband for her sister. Still, as long as she deployed them together so that looking out for each other worked out in the band's best interests, she was certain she could use their devotion to her own advantage. Branna was, indeed, skilled at war, but she also knew a thing or two about managing people.
With the rest of the band in place, she approached the one member she truly trusted and the only one she saw as her peer.
"They're a jumbled mess of outcasts, but I think we can use them to our advantage," she said.
Then she leaned in and gave her warhound, Fang, a scratch behind the ear. "Just stick with me, big guy," she said, "and we'll finally hit our big payday."
And with the band assembled, the only thing left was for Branna to give them a name: Branna's Brigands.
V'Roth, Sylvania, and Jaffy are unaltered Bones minis. Branna and the twins are HeroClix minis I've altered (Branna was a gender-swapped version of Valeros, the iconic fighter from Pathfinder). Fang and Ella are rebased minis from MageKnight and HeroClix respectively. Dell is a Bones skeletal archer that I converted by adding Green Stuff.
In terms of additional characters, the barmaids are minis I sculpted. The foppishly-hatted fellow is the result of some kit-bashing I did and arms I sculpted (he's the mini for one of my Pathfinder characters named The Traveler). I made all the terrain pieces including the bar tables (and I still need to finish painting them).

So last year at Reapercon I took Bryan's conversion class and he let us know that at the Reaper booth at the con, they were selling conversion packs filled with pieces of Bones figures to be used in conversions. I bought 2 packs. They'd been sitting in a closet ever since until last week I decided to open them up and see what I had and what I might want to do with them. I ended up having a lot of fun putting together a bunch of little abominations, but I was sitting on my couch while in the google hangout and so there was no glue involved. I stuck each combination into a little baggie and took pics so I would remember how they should go.
I haven't really been painting or doing any hobbying for a while though and so they were likely destined to sit in a drawer for a while. However, seeing maxstyles post about World Wide Miniature Day, I decided I could commit a few hours to working on these little guys. I meant to get going earlier, but I've been really tired today and had gone all slug mode on the couch. But I think I have a bit of a second wind now so I'm going to see what happens.
Here are the first two that I glued together the other night.
Don't ask me what any of the parts are. They weren't listed in the conversion packs so I have no idea.

I'm converting some Secret Weapon Miniatures "Tablescapes" terrain tiles to have a retro post-apocalyptic look for some Fallout-themed games for Necronomicon Science Fiction Convention - Tampa, FL (2017). My primary tools are some Japanese "plastic clay" and Apoxie Sculpt two-part epoxy putty.
(More information on the convention, in case y'all are down in Tampa, Florida in October and want to check out the game. I'll be using a bunch of Reaper minis, too. ;) --> http://stonehill.org/necro.htm )
The "plastic clay" (pictured below) is pretty much the same stuff as Instant Mold in the US. It comes in ingots, and consists of a plastic with a low melting point, so I can boil a mug of water in the microwave for a couple of minutes, then dunk the plastic in the water, and it turns soft and pliable -- then, I get some pliers (mindful of the hot water!) and squash the plastic against a surface with a texture I'd like to "lift." Once it cools (a trip to the freezer can hasten this), I can peel off the plastic, and now I have a temporary press-mold -- and when I'm done, I can cut and re-melt it to use again.
Apoxie Sculpt is your basic epoxy putty (similar to Magic Sculpt, Magic Sculp {sic}, and a number of others), useful for press molds, solidifies over the course of few hours, and can be sanded down once completely hardened. It's much cheaper than "green stuff," but far inferior to the green stuff for especially fine detail (such as sculpting faces on 25-32mm scale minis).
So, my basic plan here is two-fold: for my Fallout (Savage Worlds) campaign, the unifying theme is that of a "road trip," so I want ROADS, and I need wrecked junkers along the way. There's no way I'm going to smash up this pretty O-scale truck I picked up, so instead my plan is to get impressions of the hood and grill, so I can add some '50s-ish car parts to my "Scrapyard" board, and a rusty hood and fallen road signs alongside a heavily eroded roadway through the wasteland. (I also posted photos of progress on converting Rolling Hills tiles into "wasteland eroded highway" in an album on my "wall," but I haven't figured out how to attach those here as well.)
I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm just making this up as I go along. I reserve the right to back up, chip off pieces of dried epoxy putty, repaint, and try again, if it doesn't go well. The HIPS Tablescapes tiles are pretty durable, and the deep details give me good anchor points to add some putty details, but I don't want to bulk them up overly much, or add too much weight, as that defeats the purpose of having these modular lightweight terrain tiles to cart to game stores or conventions.
2017-07-07 Snapshot #1: Scrapyard Tile. I didn't actually ACCOMPLISH anything on this particular tile this morning. This is basically just to size up some of the stuff I'm working with.
My plan is to "Fallout-ize" this and some other Tablescapes tiles by introducing a few more "retro" elements to the details. In this case, I plan on using the Japanese "plastic clay" to make temporary texture molds off of the hood and grill of this 1:43 scale toy truck, so I can have a circa 1950s-ish truck grill amid the debris, and a hood alongside a broken road. Above is the "natural" Apoxie Sculpt (gray), which I'll be using for the faked truck parts, but I scraped the bottom of some cans of black-dyed Apoxie Sculpt for some of the next steps. (As I said, I'm making this up as I go.)
2017-07-07 Snapshot #2: Street Crack Textures.
First, I used some plastic clay to squash down on one of my "Urban Streets (Clean)" tiles to get impressions of some clusters of cracks represented on the surface, to make some temporary texture stamps. The board up top is what I'm working on to make the tiles usable: spray-paint to give the street a bit of color, some pumpkin orange as "rust" for grates and grills, and several passes of dribbling brushes soaked with whatever crud was at the bottom of my paintbrush cup into the gutters and cracks in the hopes of it drying up and looking like detritus left after run-off. Later on, I may try cramming little pieces of sprue painted up as tin cans, and wads of paper to suggest trash clogging the drains. These particular street boards I want to look "cruddy" more than "post-apocalyptic," because I may get more use out of them for modern-day games. I haven't yet decided on what to do for street markings. Maybe an arbitrary cross-walk somewhere, and some dotted lines, and whatever signs of weathering I can do to make it interesting, but no fallen road signs or wrecked car parts or skulls in the gutters, or anything that TOO strongly brands this as "post-apoc."

So a while ago I painted Trista as a paladin with a warhammer I took from Halbarand the cleric. http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/51436-trista-conversion-wip/?hl=trista It was my first conversion, and she's seen a lot of game time. Now that she's a 5th level paladin, I wanted to make a mounted version of her. Back during the Bones 2 Kickstarter there was a suggestion from multiple people to just take one of the mounted Bones, cut them off at the waist and glue the top half of the mini you wanted a mounted version of. Since Sir Danel from Bones 2 had some <ahem> issues with his top half, I figured it was the perfect candidate. There are a few challenges with this project that I can spot so far. First off, Trista has a very narrow waist. Her belt is also at a bit of an angle, which will complicate things. At this point I think I might have to partially re-sculpt the belt to cover the seam where the surgery occurred. I'm actually thinking I'll start from the bottom up and get the horse painted first. I'd love a few opinions on what to do with the basing and whether or not the extra bit by the rear hoof needs to stay there for support. Currently the base is bent and Sir Danel won't stand, so obviously I need to at the very least heat-treat the horse. I've got a black plastic cavalry base, plus round bases in many sizes. I'm conflicted as to whether I want to make an epic looking base that fills most of a 2" area (for gaming purposes) or if I want to go with the cavalry base for a little stability and easier storage. I'd also like to up my basing game a bit, so all suggestions will be considered as long as they fit with a jungle locale. Since this is Bones, and for gaming, I'm not going to go crazy with a high quality display level paint job (which I probably couldn't pull off anyway) and I'll be aiming for higher tabletop quality. Saves my sanity.

While cleaning and prepping this wiz, I knocked off the top of his staff (which was kinda ugly anyway). Glued it back (CA and baking soda), no surprise, came off again. So something new is in order. I came up with this. At first I felt the skull was going to be too large, I'm okay with that. Now my concern is that it looks more, "headhunter-ish". I went to bed thinking a solid gold or chrome might "fix the cannibalistic" feel of it. Or I just go with the ever-popular (and a bit tired) crystal ball or gems. Opinions? The skull seems to "evil up' the character. I'm not partial as to his disposition, I/he could go evil or good,
Thanks for lookin' - Joe

There I was the hobby store, I had the bones version in my hand when I ran across the metal Pathfinder version, I opted for metal. Still working out my NMM, planning on some color glazing before it's done. I also decided that this dude gets an elaborate base. I don't play with my figs, so they will all be getting the advanced base treatment. I also decided to play with green stuff for the first time. I only have pics of the helmet mods right now, but there's more (next post).
Thank's for droppin in and checkin this out, what do you think?

I wasn't originally planning to do a WIP of this guy, but after struggling with super glue and vaseline and half-cured greenstuff, I thought that it might be wise to post about it and learn all the ways I'm going about this wrong.
I decided to swap two of the heads because I thought it would look more balanced, and I also decided to add wings because why not? Then, because it totally looked like I'd just hacked stuff apart and sorta glued it back together (because...that's what I did), I decided to break out my increasingly stiff greenstuff.
I didn't want to wait for the GS to cure before putting brown liner on, which as you'll see later was a mistake. :P I made a sort of half-hearted attempt at scales in a couple of spots, but really all I wanted to do was smooth the join between the neck and head, so I basically just tried to smush it as flat as I could and feather the edges a bit.
And here's the wings, which were 'voluntarily' donated by my extra Rauthuros.
I wasn't quite sure what I was doing, so I just cut them apart and sorta...glued them on. Pinning didn't even occur to me until after the glue had already set (and I used a fair bit). I did try to scrape off the Brown Liner where I'd planned to join them to the body, but being Brown Liner, it rather stubbornly resisted both my fingernail and my sanding needle, so I shrugged and stuck them on anyways.
I originally was going to just smooth the super obvious place where the wings met the body, but after I'd poked and prodded and squashed the GS into place, I decided to get...creative.
That there is my super-rough first attempt at scales. It looks pretty horrid close-up, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to disguise some of that with paint. At least this way, there's some texture there that I can play with.
I am actually quite pleased with how the areas closest to his spine look, though! If you squint, they look kinda scale-like!
And here's the final result:
The wings are lopsided, but I can't do anything about that now, and this is a just-for-fun piece anyways, so I'm not going to stress about it (though it will bug me until the end of forever, lol).
The next step, after all the GS cures, will be to scrub him off again, because vaseline and paint don't mix well. And I totally did the intelligent thing in slathering him in brown liner BEFORE I'd done the conversions; there's vaseline all over that now.
Huzzah!
--OneBoot :D

This feels like a dumb newbie question but: is there any issues or gotchas with mixing materials when modifying or converting minis and making bases? (Other than a light plastic mini falling over thanks to its big metal weapon I guess.) Obviously I'd need a primer that works on all of them, and it seems like CA glue ought to keep them all together, anything else?

When scouting the local Dollar Tree this past week, I saw this sand mold of the Sydney Opera House. It's part of a collection they have along with other world landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, Pyramid, and Leaning Tower of Pisa.
I thought it looked like it might be useful as some sort of Sci-Fi industrial structure, like a large generator, pumping station, or engine of some sort.
So, after glueing on some bits, and painting this was the outcome:
IF you want to read more about the project, and see some more work in process photos, please see my blog:
http://onemoregamingproject.blogspot.com/2017/06/dollar-tree-sand-mold-sci-fi-terrain.html

I have yet to assemble a complete figure from any of the Frostgrave sprues of plastic parts, so I thought I'd start slow with a head swap. Enter Anval Theicedamned, Evil Warrior. His head is just begging to be chopped off.
I figured I'd swap one hooded head for another so I chose what appeared to be an armored hooded head from the cultists sprue and after chipping away at Anval's neck area, applied the super glue and commenced to hold it in place for several minutes. Yes, there is a better way, and it involves drilling and pinning things. Bah, details. It eventually stuck and I decided on a paint scheme.
Much metallics of various kinds. Sadly I only have a few. And a non traditional skin color. This guy with no visible face lends itself well to an exotic or alien race. Also, there's some nice detail on that axe. I decided it must be some kind of magic weapon, perhaps of the air, storm, lightning element kind? So I applied an unusual color and effect on the blade. Sparking snow and yes, alien goo. Also tried to give him a lightning tattoo in alien goo on the back.
Here is the finished piece. So how convincing is the new head?
A view of the axe
And tat

Eldest digit is turning 10 in two weeks. There will be a pathfinder party and I get to be the dungeon master. I also get to prepare minis for the party. While most will make characters a couple days before (end of next week), Indy the eldest wanted to make one this weekend. Went with a female half-Orc ranger wielding a double axe. Sounds fun, right? Well, I don't seem to have a lot of double axe wielding minis. Actually have a prepainted one, but it is an Orc and he's definitely male, so that was out.
I figure I can convert an appropriate figure that's wielding a pole arm without too much trouble. But it would have to have the right positioning for the weapon. Came across Vernicia and Indy says, that's her. It turns out I have this figure from years ago. Pulled it out of the box of shame, primed black. Here it looks after dusting it off pre cutting.
cut the standby end off and made a point out of what was left of the shaft. Also found a couple of prepainted orkz to remove axe heads from. They are big and ridiculous so they'll be perfect!
drilled out the shaft end of the plastic axe heads a little to give them a chance to hold onto the sharpened shaft and applied super glue. Also glued to a base at this point. Then hit the whole thing with a heavy drybrush of white primer.
And did a quick paint all in one night. Left it on the table and we will see what the reaction is in the morning. I think she turned out pretty good. What do you think?

I've been on a Fallout kick, digging through various unpainted and incomplete minis on a quest of, "Could THIS be useful for a Fallout-themed campaign?" So, I've been looking for anything vaguely retro-futuristic or overtly post-apocalyptic ... and for some reason, when I looked at Sugar (I'd gotten a couple of these as part of a clearance "grab bag" deal a while back), I was reminded of an old, old 1970s TV show called "Happy Days" (that gave me some weird ideas of what actually went on in the 1950s) -- particularly of a character called Pinky Tuscadero. No, the mini wasn't wearing "hot pants," but I think it was just the tied top that made me think of that. Somehow I got to thinking that with some putty, I could extend that micro-skirt to look more like a poodle skirt, and then I could transform this figure into a new member of the Atom Cats gang (or some facsimile thereof).
(In Fallout 4, the Atom Cats are a Boston-based gang based at a Red Rocket service station, with a bit of a greaser/hot-rodder vibe going on, though they specialize in power armor rather than hot rods. I'm a fan of their flame paint jobs for power armor.)
So, I used some "brown stuff" ribbon epoxy to lengthen the skirt a bit, and to make a kerchief "tied" at the neck. It's still short for a poodle skirt, but I figured it would still get the general idea across.
That poodle looks a bit mutated but ... hey, that's entirely appropriate for Fallout, right? Maybe she doesn't even know what a poodle looks like. ;)

For my miniatures games at Necronomicon, I like to have some sort of terrain piece on the table that stands out as a potential attention-grabber, in the hopes of attracting any wandering undecided players in the game room prior to start time, and perhaps motivating them to go sign up for the game. The trouble is that such terrain pieces with a strong vertical element BLOCK LINE OF SIGHT for seated players. For a miniatures wargame, that wouldn't be such an issue, when you usually just have two standing people with laser pointers maneuvering around the table. In an RPG scenario, it's maybe 6 people (plus me), and I'm usually the only one standing. Some tall building in the middle of the table means that one or more players can't see the zombies/mutants/whatever behind the building, or their status tokens, even though the PC should have no such trouble (being right there).
Therefore, certain toy play sets I find at the thrift store can fit the bill. This "facade" or "backdrop" piece helps to set a scene, but it's on the GM's side of the table, in lieu of a GM screen. It serves as a staging area to hide minis and reference sheets (not die rolls -- I roll them out in the open), and since it's right next to me (and I am standing up for most of the game), it shouldn't be blocking line of sight for any of the seated players. (If a PC moves to a position where he's going "behind" the facade, then he's leaving the table zone, and I either need to set up a new area as the action shifts, or just resolve that we're going "theater of the mind" for whatever that PC is doing poking around off-stage rather than staying and joining in on the fight or whatever other action is dominating the main scenario area).
The price for such a play set varies according to the moods of the price-setter, I guess. One day, I'll find some elaborate play set and it's just $1-$2. Another day, I'll be excited at finding the perfect set piece ... and then I see it's been set at $25 (and it's not even remotely COMPLETE), so I pass it over. I confess, there are a number of items I've gotten because I figured I'd get some sort of use out of it (without a specific plan) ... and after a while, some of those toys have gone right back to Goodwill after I figured that I needed some more garage space, and it was highly unlikely I'd actually get around to doing something with that toy within my lifetime.
Well, one acquisition I found at the thrift store was an incomplete version of the Nickelodeon TMNT play set:
Sadly, it's not the newer Toys 'R' Us version with the nicer details and bits. Also, it was lacking the building-top water tower or billboard pieces (or the action figures). I figured that this might be useful for a street scene either for a superheroic scenario, or perhaps post-apocalyptic. And for $2? Why not?
I started by removing the big neon green pipe in the back, the lower "sewer" level of the play set, and the electronic talking box (behind the central "Chinatown" roof section), along with the button and the giant turtle "foot" meant to kick whatever figure has the misfortune to be standing there when the button is pressed. I used a Dremel tool to remove the protruding tabs on the bottom that would have linked up the "sewer" section, so the "sidewalk" could rest flat on the table. One danger immediately was that I'd removed some important structural supports (the sewer level, the electronics box, and the green pipe), so at this point the remaining play set was a LITTLE bit wobbly. It's rigid enough plastic, however, that it's not much of an issue, but I might have to reinforce the base.

"Hell's Vengeance" is a recent Pathfinder Adventure Path, in which the player characters are evil. This is the first evil-PC Adventure Path that Paizo has produced.
One of the friendly non-player characters (NPCs) is a young woman named Cimri Staelish -- a troublemaker in the little town where the adventure begins. She is supposed to adventure alongside the PCs for a while, and let the GM advise the players on how to be evil, if they don't abandon their usual heroic inclinations fast enough.
I am running this Adventure Path for some of my friends, so I decided to convert a miniature to represent Cimri.
She uses a kukri, wears leather armor, and has a bobbed haircut. Adventure Path #103 has color artwork for her.
The Warlord miniature Saramonde (14299), of the Crusaders faction, came to mind as a base figure for a minor conversion: link to Saramonde in Reaper gallery
... so I chopped the sword and scabbard, mashed the sword with flat pliers into a wider blade and carved it into a kukri shape, and sculpted longer hair with Green Stuff.
I attached her to a round base and sculpted some dirt and rocks.
Here's how the conversion looks.
She appeared in the first 3 sessions of the game like this, unpainted.
Last week, I started painting. I used brush-on primer and then spent about 2 hours painting almost everything with rough colors:
The next day, I painted for another 2 hours, giving higher highlights, sharper lining, and smoother transitions.
She is ready for the Forum, and ready for her first full-color appearance in the game next weekend.
Enjoy,
Derek

So I have a ranger beast master character who has a goat companion. I hated the fact that Hildir and her goat come on one base.
So I separated them.
Next will be some combination of the 2 bones figures. Ideally I will take the grandmother's upper body and attach it to the legs of rioter, but her waist is much narrower. If that looks weird, I'll just do a head transplant!
Then arms hollowed out for a toothpick staff.